“[Trump] would often equate that she was mentally retarded,” said one source, who described how kind Matlin and her interpreter Jack Jason were.
During the taping of the show, Trump would often scribble down notes while sitting at the table of “the boardroom”—the show’s primary set. A person familiar with the notes who helped clean up after tapings said that on one of the pieces of paper, Trump wrote: “Marlee, is she retarded??”
“He would write notes on his blotter, his papers in front of him, and he would scribble notes in it,” a source described. “It was usually just asinine things on them.”
During breaks, Trump would often remain mic’d up and engage in chit-chat with Donald Trump Jr. or other people in the boardroom for tapings.
“[Trump] would make fun of her voice. It actually sounded a lot like what he did [to] the New York Times guy,” another person who worked on The Apprentice for years told The Daily Beast, referring to when Trump mocked a disabled reporter last year. The source said this incident occurred outside the boardroom, during a break from filming. “Like, to make it seem like she was mentally not there? [It] sounded like he got a real kick out of it. It was really upsetting.”
Another Apprentice staffer, who worked on the show for roughly five years, described how Trump commenting on Matlin’s deafness and supposed mental deficiencies was a regular occurrence during the whole season. Occasionally, it would be directly to Matlin’s face.
“In the boardroom, he would talk to her like she was ‘special,’” the source said. “He took her deafness as a some kind of [mental] handicap.” The staffer recalls sitting in the control room during the shoot for one episode and being taken aback hearing Trump make an “insensitive” comment about Matlin’s deafness to the actress while she was seated across the boardroom table.
“She responded [to him], she stood up for herself,” the source said. (This exchange was not included in the final cut of the episode.)
